I thought this one was super poignant. Past couple of strip topics, I've tried to make the point that Slick has been hurt by the Patriarchy narrative, too. He's tied his self-worth pretty explicitly to aspirations of a pimp identity, which is THE term for someone who profits by exploiting, using, owning, and controlling women. Reality has not been jiving with that, he's had a hard time constructing a new self-worth narrative for himself, especially since he's conflated pimp-hood with romance and his own real desires and needs for affection, love, and even sex.

And he just got shut down by Monique, whose job it was -not- to dishonestly build him up with meaningless gold stars and validate him and make him feel better during her own time of need.

So, his Mr. Hyde side, which has really always been there but just has its own legs now, reverted and went back to what it knows. And what it knows is the narrative that to build himself up, he's got to exploit, use, own, and control women. To make himself feel like he's not low, he's got to make sure that someone else is beneath him.

But Slick himself is a lot better at seeing women as people now. Slick, himself, might finally be realizing exactly how and why that narrative is terrible. Looking at his devil self with some distance and perspective, as he might be getting since the computer is still all devilishly-aglow as he's looking at it, might just open his eyes.

Joined: 01 May 2007Posts: 1081Location: in that cool mountain air, on an appalachian trail

Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:15 am Post subject:

Black Kitty wrote:

Slick's dark "Id" side

I like the way you put this. It's not an entirely accurate description, but I haven't seen him referred to in this way before and it struck my fancy. I admit that I've been skipping most of the comic discussion threads lately so I don't know what's been discussed already, but the "double" being slick's "dark id" shows insight that hits closer to the truth than some of the other descriptions I've see. He's not a vampire, as others have already pointed out. Devil Slick seems obvious with the horns and tail, but I don't think he is an actually devil (as other devils we've seen are) because he is more of a subconscious projection of the normal Slick as opposed to an actually entity. Evil Slick or Dark Slick could be used as a description of this projection, but they don't seem entirely accurate as it is not really an evil version of Slick committing evil acts for the sake of being evil. That's why I see it being Slick's "dark id" as hitting closest to the truth. While dark and evil, yes, it acts with purpose. To fulfill Slick's dark desires and even to protect him, in it's own twisted way, as it does in this comic by taking out Slick's feelings of rejection and worthlessness on someone else in a twisted attempt to make him feel better.

Oh, and to be clear, I don't care what you call him and am not even advocating this as a possibility. Just pointing out something black kitty's post got me thinking about._________________FormerlyGreen_Finn

I think this comic might be about projecting your feelings onto others, in addition to being about hurting others to feel better. I could also see Slick's other self doing this to see how the emotions look from the outside.

It is creepy to me this place exists full of devil girls whose sole job appears to be absorbing other people's horrible feelings. I wonder where they exist in the devil people hierarchy. I'd assume none of them are robots, since it seems like robots wouldn't be able to take on such feelings successfully.

I also wonder how many other Sinfest people go to this place at night via their computers.

Joined: 01 May 2007Posts: 1081Location: in that cool mountain air, on an appalachian trail

Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 4:23 am Post subject:

stripeypants wrote:

I'd assume none of them are robots, since it seems like robots wouldn't be able to take on such feelings successfully.

Despite the prevailing theory that persisted (what? a year ago, three years ago? I have a poor concept of the passage of time) that the devil girls and more specifically the lesbian devil girls sent to temp Slick were robots, I never bought into it. There were only ever a few panicked accusations by Slick to support this idea. In the past, strip after strip have shown ordinary human women being transformed by Satan into devil girls. Add that to the introduction of actual fembots and I think that theory has been good and dismissed. (Not too mention if my recollection is correct, the devil girls in question were fuchsia and baby blue, who I think everyone can agree on their not being robots).

So, yes, I agree these devil girls are not robots (I don't think any of them truly are) but are devil girls employed to work on a porn site run by Big D (I suspect just one of many) as just one of his means of corrupting souls. Slick's counterpart (for lack of a better term) entered his computer, traveled through the net, and emerged in the real life location where the "Bomf District" is located and probably webcast from (although it could be an actual club that actual people patronize, but the internet travel aspect makes me doubt this. of course the required payment of one's heart to enter a booth, the devil girl's nonchalance at seeing a customer at her door, and her invitation to come in to "bomf her", which I expect had a somewhat different connotation that the bomfing she ultimately received, throws a shadow of doubt on my internet theory).

Quote:

It is creepy to me this place exists full of devil girls whose sole job appears to be absorbing other people's horrible feelings

As I somewhat addressed above (and in my previous post, I don't think that the purpose of this place is for "absorbing other people's horrible feelings". We have seen other devil clubs (what's her name works at one. does she have a name yet?) and the devil's main objective has always been corrupting souls to ensure their inevitable damnation to hell. It doesn't follow that he would alleviate the torment of a living soul by allowing them to transfer their negative feelings to another (though that act in itself can't really be called virtuous).

I find it more likely that Slick's dark counterpart was acting rogue (if he is indeed one of the devil's machinations) and was seeking revenge for how Slick was made to feel. (Which lends credence to the theory that it is more an agent for the release for Slick's dark impulses, a dark id, rather than a truly evil counterpart or devil Slick in the service of Satan).)_________________FormerlyGreen_Finn

I thought this one was super poignant. Past couple of strip topics, I've tried to make the point that Slick has been hurt by the Patriarchy narrative, too. He's tied his self-worth pretty explicitly to aspirations of a pimp identity, which is THE term for someone who profits by exploiting, using, owning, and controlling women. Reality has not been jiving with that, he's had a hard time constructing a new self-worth narrative for himself, especially since he's conflated pimp-hood with romance and his own real desires and needs for affection, love, and even sex.

I think Slick actually managed to outgrow playing pimp (hey, you gotta start somewhere). At least, I don't recall him doing so within the past couple of years or so. As more and more characters have been added to the strip, certain recurring bits of business have fallen by the wayside, and Slick as pimp ("Slimp"?) is one of them. Slick hardly ever tries to pick up women any more, either, but then, he never followed up on even the half-hearted interest that women occasionally showed him. Heck, he apparently didn't even have sex with a robot that he bought for the express purpose of being his girlfriend (which just shows that he considered her a person from the start; he didn't want to just set her into sex mode, he wanted to get to know her first).

Really, he seems to be spending more and more time at home on the computer, in itself not exactly an encouraging sign. As I've said ad nauseum, the strip needs to get back to character interaction instead of continually having one character or a pair of characters off in their own little "subgenres" with the twain (or whatever) rarely meeting.

Random example: Crim used to be sort of the voice of perspective. He understood "the real world" (politics, sociology, etc) better than the rest of the characters and that frequently came through in conversations with them. He grounded them. Nowadays virtually the only person he talks to is a woman who unconditionally adores him and takes his every word as, for lack of a better term, gospel. If that's not a for all intent and purpose a fantasy world, well...